


The Night Before Leaving

by selkieskin



Category: Withnail & I (1986)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Asexual Character, Asexuality, Coming Out, Drug Abuse, Friendship, Gen, Internalised Acephobia, Internalized Acephobia, Loneliness, M/M, Other, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-08
Updated: 2013-10-08
Packaged: 2017-12-28 20:30:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/996242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selkieskin/pseuds/selkieskin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marwood is about to leave. Withnail comes to him in the night, desperate for him not to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Night Before Leaving

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: There may be some homophobic and acephobic sentiments in this work, but I think they're character- and period-appropriate. I wrote this between 4 and 5am, so if there are any inaccuracies please point them out and I'll fix them.

He stopped dead as I walked in with my newly close-cropped hair. His always-sallow face went even paler as he stared at me, frozen in that same stinking dressing gown he always wore when he couldn't be arsed to put on clothes. It was hanging off one shoulder, but he didn't even seem to have realised, despite how freezing it was.

“Morning,” he croaked.

It was the afternoon.

 

It was hard to believe that I would be leaving my friend less than 24 hours from that point. I think he'd had a hard time believing it too until he saw me in that doorway. We both knew that I was in all likelihood leaving him to his death here, alone, in what used to be our flat – or wherever he'd go after that, because he couldn't be there for much longer. But of course, if I stayed all that would happen would be that we shared that life sentence, and Withnail was many things, but what he was not was selfish enough to truly want me to share his fate. No, that's not true – I think he wanted it more than life itself, but he knew that he had no right to demand me to stay, so all I got from him were hurt but sincere congratulations. We both knew that me staying was not an option.

So I wasn't surprised that he got his hands on some awful booze that afternoon and tried to drown himself in it. He kept offering me some, but knowing that it was probably toxic (it smelt quite pungently of paint stripper) and citing that I really needed to get up for a train the next day (let alone the final packing of my few essential belongings into my suitcase), I declined. And it killed me to see the hurt in his eyes every time I declined, but I still did it. And this new, judgemental part of me that was emerging, or that had always been there but that I'd always been able to ignore, saw him destroying himself and didn't want to endorse it, even if it did no good at all. Danny and Presuming Ed were still hanging around, freeloading for as long as they possibly could before they got evicted along with my friend.

I hated them. I didn't want them here, coming between me and my friend in our last day together. I was civil to them, but that was all.

Eventually I couldn't stand it any more, and removed myself to go to bed.

 

He followed me, barely half an hour later. His tall figure hovered in the doorway, black against the grey-darkness of the hall. I could hear Danny's incoherent overtones coming from the living room, ever-philosophising, and the bass of Presuming Ed's presumed agreement.

“Can I sleep in here tonight?” he asked in a rush.

“If you want to,” I found myself answering back on an impulse and then immediately kicking myself for it. Why on earth had I agreed to that? 

The truth was that although we had shared a bed before, it was always for practical purposes, such as for warmth or (barely a week before) to hide from his corpulent Uncle Monty. I still shivered as I remembered what almost happened in that room. I still blamed Withnail – how could I not, it was his bloody fault – but I didn't expect anything more from him. He felt guilty, but he didn't really understand quite how terrified I was by the memory. It was just another one in a long line of mistakes he'd made in his life, and only addressing one would be to ignore them all. It was too late in the game to get into that argument. It didn't matter now.

That night was cold, but not unusually so. The fact that I agreed only meant I was feeling guilty enough to agree on emotional grounds. We didn't speak of it, but we knew that was crossing a boundary.

He slid into the bed next to me still clad in nothing but the dressing gown and his underwear and I felt the temperature under the covers drop considerably. I wrestled with myself about whether to tell him to go away and let me sleep, although I knew I wouldn't. These past few days he had been nothing but a reminder of my old life, and although I cared about him very much, I couldn't let myself get sucked back into that same unchanging void, so I wanted nothing more than to not have to deal with him.

So when I felt his clammy hands suddenly grip my sides and his mouth inexpertly clamping over mine I immediately pushed him off with all my strength, hands slapping against his bare chest and me launching myself backwards as far as the headboard would allow me.

“M-my god, what are you doing, you're not queer, you absolute nancy, what are you _doing?_ ”

He didn't answer, and his face was unreadable. The taste he'd left in my mouth was acrid and foul. He'd been sick, or what he'd been drinking was worse than I thought.

“You're not queer,” I repeated, but less certainly.

“No,” he murmured quietly, as if disappointed in himself.

“Then Withnail, what the _fuck-_ ”

“Because, because- I don't know what else to- I can't, I can't bear it, so I've gone and done something like this because I fucking just _want to_ want to, alright?” he shot back, and he'd been looking down so I couldn't see his face but then he looked at me in the eyes, and those pale, bloodshot eyes I knew so well came up to focus on me and their need turned my stomach.

“Withnail, I know, but you can't just- Why-”

“Why can't I just... _f-f-fuck_ someone?” he growled angrily and humiliated, looking away and burying his face with his hands in despair and scratching down his face. His words were slurred, and he shrank away from me.

“Who? What are you talking about?” I was still on the defensive, panicked by the intimate turn this night had taken.

“Oh, fucking, someone. Anyone. Lots of people, but... _anyone_. What in the fuck-”

“Do- do you want to?” I gasped, surprised.

“No.”

“Sorry, but what are you talking about?” I reached out and touched him on the shoulder, and brought his focus back to me.

“There's something wrong with me.” His tone was haunted, and this sentiment seemed amplified by the dark. The revelation had all the weight of a death sentence, and we were silent for a few seconds. “Because you're the closest friend I've ever had and I still can't do it. And now you've got to go. And sometimes I think I know that you'll perhaps come back for me someday but sometimes I think why would you, you'll be having too much of a good time with the work and the fame and the parties and the free fucking fancy booze, so what did I have to lose? And, I thought... maybe it would work this time. But it's still not, it's still, I'm still not working. It's just... fate.” He started to move off me then and his tone was quiet and self-loathing, “I'm sorry, I'll go. Shit.”

I hadn't expected him to talk about me in such a way. It moved me to catch his arm and stop him from leaving in such a state. He was shaking, I could feel it. I squeezed his arm, trying to reassure.

“...Hey,” I whispered to him, searching for words. “O-one day... one day you'll find someone, a nice girl, or... or something, something like that, and it'll happen. Believe me, it'll happen.” I gave him a watery, insincere smile but it felt like a lie on my tongue and we both knew it. It didn't change anything, my hollow reassurances. Withnail had simply never shown an interest, for all he was so desperately lonely, but I had never thought it worth much attention. To hear him discuss it like this, though, was heartbreaking and more than a little shocking. I was almost unbearably uncomfortable with the situation. “You've got... Danny, haven't you?” Another useless attempt. Danny was our dealer, and although he knew profit when he saw it he didn't care about us any more than he cared about his own wretched health. He would sell Withnail for drugs if it suited him, for no reason at all other than it struck his fancy at the time. I cast around, lost, for something a little more adequate to say. I came up with nothing. My face fell. “Listen, what do you want from me? Tell me what to say.”

He gulped, and thought for a while.

“I'd just like...” he said, tone strangely vulnerable still, and words measured, “for tonight not to spoil anything. I was drunk. Hell, I _am_ drunk. So don't blame me, please, and I can hate this whole débâcle enough for the both of us instead, and you can forget it happened. And now I'll leave.”

I yanked at his arm, and then pulled him roughly into my embrace, and he shuddered into the touch, proving my suspicions right. I clung on for dear life. I didn't say any more about him finding someone else, I couldn't say that I was sorry, I couldn't articulate how much I just wanted to fix him and make him stop hurting so intensely so that he stopped with the booze and the drugs and the desperation, but all I could say was 'Withnail'. It wasn't much, but it felt more honest than any apologies or reassurances I could give. An apology would be to acknowledge my betrayal. The reassurances would have been lies.

It was all very strange, but we lay there together that night like lovers, skin against skin, but without doing anything at all erotic – that would have felt false, more false than how awkward it was for two friends to be lying here together with each other in this way. And although both of us clung to one other as though it was natural, it never felt comfortable or right. I could never be what he really wanted, and more to the point, neither could he himself. The grips were bruising and we were both cold and I could feel his ribs hard against mine and he smelt like death warmed up (barely) with slight overtones of vomit, but I still ached with regret because it still felt like not nearly enough for all the years and all the misery we'd shared. As horrible as leaving would be, I couldn't even imagine coming back. It would never be the same again, and in reality it had already changed irrevocably. It was already over even then and we knew it, despite his pathetic hope. In reality, I had already shed this place like a skin, and it didn't feel a part of me any more.

Withnail wouldn't be a part of me any more. And yet somehow I knew that would always hurt, like a splinter under the skin.


End file.
